


(I have loved the stars too fondly) to be fearful of the night

by Drel_Murn



Series: Step by Step [14]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ba Sing Se, Character Study, Coming of Age, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Dreamsharing, Fictional Religion & Theology, Gen, Meddling, Meddling Spirits, Not Canon Compliant - The Legend of Korra, Original Character-centric, POV First Person, Pre-Season/Series 01, References to Inuit Culture, Religion, Religious Discussion, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Shamanism, Southern Water Tribe, Spirits, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, Transphobia, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:15:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27873670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drel_Murn/pseuds/Drel_Murn
Summary: Seta doesn't remember his twin. Kore died so long ago and when they were both so young that it's a near impossibility. Still, not that he's sick people seem to always bring him. Kore this, Kore that, Kore died, so you won't.
Relationships: Apto of the Rabbit Fox Tribe (OC) & Seta of the Rabbit Fox Tribe (OC), Hurekina of the Rabbit Fox Tribe & Seta of the Rabbit Fox Tribe (OC), Kore of Tukaykup (OC) & Seta of the Rabbit Fox Tribe (OC), Lin of Ba Sing Se (OC) and Seta of the Rabbit Fox Tribe (OC)
Series: Step by Step [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/557249
Kudos: 2





	1. The South Pole, Winter Camp

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! First of all, thank you to all my readers for sticking with me on this, this chapter's gonna push me over 100K, and I'm really excited and bewildered that I've gotten this far! 
> 
> Second of all, I would like to say that this work talks a lot about religion, specifically the religion of the Southern Water Tribes. As the Southern Water Tribes are based off of the Inuit peoples and other people native to North America, that portrayal is a little sensitive. I would like to say first that I did do some research on, but in the end that is not my culture and you should not take anything I write as representative of the Inuit peoples. I also wrote about Shamans and Shamanism as a major part of the story. And like, I did research here to, but again, not my culture, not my religion.
> 
> See the end for my reference page. Footnotes will be explained at the bottom of the page, but should not be necessary to understand the text. They're mostly just my explaining where I got a term or length of time.

**Seta of the Rabbit Fox Tribe**

* * *

**The South Pole, Rabbit Fox Tribe Winter Camp, 93 AG**

I don't remember Kore.

Kore. He is - was - my twin.

I don't remember what he looked like, let alone what his personality was like.

I wonder if I looked like him. I wonder if he would have looked like me.

We both turned out to be boys in the end, after all.

My parents don't like to talk about him. Given the expressions on their faces when I ask, sometimes I wonder if they dislike it not because of agonizing years of watching him waste away, but because they think he never truly left, just took up residence behind my eyes.

They wouldn't be the only ones in the tribe to think that, but even if they do, at least they still treat me as a boy, like I asked.

My grandparents - my mother's parents - will say more. Not much, but they like to tell the story of how Kore even managed to live to be a toddler, when all had been so sure he would die in his first few moons.

They tell me that he was sick even when he was born. It happens sometimes with children, and even more often with twins, for two children in the womb will need more than one, and a mother cannot always provide that. When Kore was born, he was sick, and my parents begged Shanam Tannesuma for help, asking if there was anything she could do.

Tannesuma called upon the spirits.

First there was La, Lord of the Oceans Deep, who is ours as much as we are his. La, Lord of the Imiq peoples who make up the Southern Water Tribes. La is a Great Spirit, he cannot be expected to come at every call. His invocation was more of a formality. And yet, my grandmother insists he came.

And my grandfather reminds her that when La left, he left in his entirety, leaving behind nothing for Kore.

Tannesuma called next on Tui, Brightest Light at Night, our second Great Spirit, responsible to us to a lesser degree, but she was still fond of her husband’s children. Tui is a Great Spirit, she cannot be expected to come at every call. Her invocation was more of a formality. And yet, my grandfather insists that she came.

And my grandmother reminds him that when Tui left, she left in her entirety, leaving behind nothing for Kore.

Tannesuma called next on Kisarshumari, the rabbit fox spirit of our Rabbit Fox Tribe, and a trickster to the core. Kisarshumari is ours, and bound herself willingly to us. Kisarshumari told my parents that although she steals the moon herself from the sky, she cannot steal that which made him sick, and she cannot give that which would cure him.

Tannesuma called upon Arwanak and Takuakamik from our neighboring tribes, then Kastiglaks and Tkokwis from further out. My parents asked, begged, pleaded for their son. These spirits were not theirs, but if only they were willing to help, my parents would leave Kisarshumari’s tribe for theirs and devote the rest of their lives to their service. Each made their excuses and left.

Tannesuma warned my parents that if they would not help, then likely none could, but my parents only urged her on, on to spirits from farther and farther away, any they could think of that might take an interest and help my brother. Again and again, they were told that Kore could not be helped, until at last there was one spirit, lingering, watching as my parents turned to each other and cried.

“There is no one who can heal your child,” said Tukaykup, Dusk, He of the Indigo Skies, Him who Set the Sun. “But I know of endings, and I know of rest, and if it is what you desire, I can give him a few years more with you, and when he must sleep, I can give him a place in the sky as a star.”

My parents agreed to the deal, for more time with my brother was better than less. Still, Kore only got two years more before we committed him to the sea for sea wolves to eat, and I remember none of it.

I just . . . I don’t know him.

* * *

So, I had a twin brother. Twins are luck, you know, together or apart. Not necessarily bad or good, but they mean that times are changing.

Tannesuma reminds me of this, forehead against mine in the hot, damp darkness under the blanket, carefully holding the bowl on her lap to keep the hot water from spilling as steam drifts up, invisible without light. My breath rattles in my lungs.

“I rather think that’s a useless thought,” I tell her. “Twins are always being born, and times are always changing. It’s whatever.”

She laughs at my snapped back observation.

“Maybe,” she says. “I think people hope that if we say it often enough, the spirits will notice that you should be lucky. Your brother certainly had more than his fair share of bad luck. Surely you should get more good luck in return?”

Tannesuma keeps talking, but her words slip out of focus like she’s far away, then like I’m underwater, then suddenly there again but the words are all wrong. I can hear her talking, but as I stare into the darkness it’s like she’s speaking a different language.

I blink, and there’s the familiar orange light against the roof of Tannesuma’s sod brick ena[1] because I’m lying on my back, the blanket no longer over my head.

“Seta! You’re awake!” Apto leans over me, gladly abandoning her work on the outfit she’s making for the celebration that will mark the end of her second seven year cycle and the beginning of her adult years. “Tannesuma says you were talking about twins again. What is it this time, are us twins going to make green fish fly over the moon?”

“Every time you ask me that, you get more outlandish,” I tell her as she helps me sit up and adjust the furs.

“Yes, well, the last time you had a fever, you narrated to us the story of how we could find the mythical water dragons and convince them to teach us how to fly - note, not how to bend water, which is what they’re known for teaching - so we could fly a ship to the moon and beyond,” Hurekina says, not at all phased by his twin’s words as he works on his own outfit, carefully adding the last of the beading. “Flying green fish are tame in comparison.”

I only grin at the pair of them, grateful for their company in the face of my illness. Their voices ground me here in the real world more than anyone else’s, and conversations with them are the best distraction from the voices I’ve found yet.

“So,” Apto prompts as she reluctantly returns to her costume, looking like she’d rather be doing anything else. “Flying green fish over the moon?”

“I think Tannesuma was trying to encourage me. She said something about how Kore must have gotten all of my bad luck, so obviously I’ve got his good luck.” I snort. “Like I haven’t been living in her ena on and off for a year, just so she can keep an eye on me.”

Apto rolls her eyes as Hurekina shakes his head. “Let’s not talk about that then. Tell me, how _would_ you get green fish to fly over the moon?”

“What’s-” I have to pause to cough into my shoulder. When I go to speak again, my voice hurts against my raw throat, the coughing fit having made it feel like I’d scraped it with tree bark all over again. “What’s with green flying fish today? At least when I told you that plan, I had a fever.”

“I don’t know,” Apto admits. “I just like the sound of it. Green flying fish, green flying fish, green flying fish-”

“By Kisarshumari, if you don’t stop saying that you’re not going to live to use that outfit!” Hurekina exclaims, dropping his parka - and carefully putting the carved bone bead back into the pouch - to reach for Apto.

I throw my head back to laugh as Apto makes a squawking sound and exaggeratedly falls over, even though Hurekina putting the bead away gave her more than enough time to brace herself. The laughing sends me into another coughing fit, and Apto and Hurekina quickly pull apart. Hurekina rolls over Apto to kneel by my side, one hand on my shoulder to rub my back, the other hand fluttering uselessly. Apto moves to the fire to get me a cup of the tisane Tannesuma keeps warm in a pot.

When the coughing fit’s over, and I’m drinking the tisane slowly, trying to soothe my throat, Apto turns to Hurekina with a solemn look on her face.

“You know, when I was your age, I didn’t stop in the middle of my beadwork-”

“In the time between our births, the sun didn’t even move a full degree, you are so full of-”

“Stooop,” I groan. “You’re going to make me laugh again.”

* * *

“-not doing well,” Tannesuma’s voice filters through the curtain sectioning off this portion of her sod brick ena. “This is the fourth time it’s flared up, and every time I thought he was fully over it, and each flare up has been worse.”

“We understand,” Mom says, her voice tight.

“If we still had waterbenders, we could have-” Tannesuma says, bright and furious before she cuts herself off. I imagine Pakasariay, her second, putting his hand on her shoulder. He doesn’t talk much when he’s not acting as Tannesuma’s voice, but he’s always there for her. I know it’s not just because it’s his job as her second to act as her assistant. If that were true, he wouldn’t have moved clans with her.

I close my eyes and breathe through the cough. I can feel rattling in my throat, fighting to get out.

It’s a familiar set of words.

 _If we still had waterbenders, if we still had waterbenders_.

It’s a harsh life we live, and while we can live without them, waterbenders had made our lives so much easier.

There are probably some still out there in the tribes - children who’d been born after the bulk of the raids. No healers though. In the end, everyone who could fight had fought as the battles were brought into our homes. It’s hard not to defend yourself when you have the ability and might die otherwise. And healing is a delicate task that takes years to learn, even with a teacher.

“I know,” Dad says quietly.

I spare a moment from my own self pity to feel sad for my parents. I’m the second child they’re losing to a long drawn out illness, and only the second child they’d been able to have after a long string of miscarriages and stillbirths. None of us can really spare the energy to feel much other than numbness right now. I get better. And I keep getting worse.

“Is there anything we can do?” Dad asks. I can hear the empty, naked longing where he can no longer summon up desperation. “Anything to keep him alive, just a little while longer?”

My hearing goes odd again, but I don’t need to hear Tannesuma under the crowd of broken sentences and words to know what she’s going to say. She’s been telling my parents the same thing since I first came down with this sickness. Go north, where it’s warm.

I can’t go north, not anymore. For all that I think this cough will kill me slowly, curled in on myself, my throat raw with it, I know that going north right now will only be the faster option, as sure as a night on the ice without protection or a knife to my heart.

I’ve pieced it together from the speaking no one else can hear, from the figures at the edge of my vision that no one else can hear, from the stories Tannesuma and Pakarasiay tell me when there is nothing better for the three of us to do, sitting around a fire as the wind howls outside, bringing cascades of fighting voices.

Tannesuma’s been telling me stories about how she became a shaman, about how her mentor became a shaman. There’s a pattern to it. First there’s the sickness. There’s always a sickness. Some people grow sick physically, for others it’s more of a mental thing, the spirits tugging them out to wander away from their bodies.

Tannesuma doesn’t tell me outright, but then if I had to be told, I don’t think I would survive this.

I’ve been called. This is my sickness. Some spirit saw me, and named me a shaman and called for me to become one. The only way out is through - I will either become a shaman or die in the process.

Whoever called me has the right to be my guardian, the right to be the leader of my helper spirits. The right, and the privilege, and the _benefits_ that come with being a shaman’s first point of connection with the spirit world.

It’s a prestigious position, but not all callers take it. Some simply call and move on. 

And I think that whoever called me is gone. Someone chose to call for me, to start this whole painful process, but whoever it was disappeared before I could hear the clamour of the spirits, leaving me to the hostile crowd.

And there are so _many_ groups here shouting over each other, and there seem to be more people by the day, vying for my attention.

I can hear the shouting of voices in Fire, yelling words I don’t know, words that sound so familiar like if I just try I’ll understand what they’re saying-

There’s Perespato, the elder who died last winter after we both fell into the freezing water, yelling right back at them in our sacred language that I belong to my own tribe, his voice hoarse like it had been when he died coughing beside me.

There are voices arguing in the Sea Wolf Tribe’s language, which I know enough of to catch that they want me, that they say I must be theirs, that they need me to train their waterbender before she hurts herself.

There’s Kiwkup, the little boy who had wandered away in the spring and froze to death, yelling in our sacred language that they have no claim on me, his high voice rising over the crowd.

There are voices arguing in the language of the Penguin Seal Tribe, and I know even less of their language than I do of the Sea Wolf’s but I know enough to know that they say their shaman is dead, to know they say they need me, to know they say-

There’s Peisunay, who died right next to me of burns he’d gotten fighting against Fire Nation soldiers in the last raid (the first in so long, we thought they’d forgotten us), yelling in our sacred language that they have no right to me.

And sometimes someone will shout, “Well he doesn’t need this!” above the clamour, and there’s a _tug_ , and I have to curl up because it's not my chest that hurts even as I get sent into another coughing fit.

I can hear the lesser spirits of my tribe’s people defending me and standing against the hungry crowd, but they defend me on right of tribe, not on right of caller. No one stands up before the crowd to say that they have called me, that they have first right to me.

When I’m not too distracted, I think that I’m glad I never heard my brother. Given the stories I’ve heard people tell about dead twins, my brother should be exactly the kind of spirit who ends up having some mystical knowledge about who I am, and I don’t need anyone like that. I don’t need anyone to come into my life with that kind of sharp knowledge for us to cut each other up upon.

I already have Lin.

Lin.

Lin!

“Come back to me Seta,” she says gently, the sound of her voice like suddenly dropping an anchor in a storm. I’m jarred to a halt, staring into her green eyes as her thumbs trace my cheek bones.

“Lin,” I sob, tears welling up in my eyes. I fall forwards to bury my face into her shoulder just as much as she pulls me down into it.

“I’ve got you,” she says, her arms strong around me as she squeezes me reassuringly, hard enough that it’s hard to breathe, solid as she rocks me gently back and forth. She’s the only thing solid around me.

The world we dream in, never the most stable at the best of times, has been less and less so the longer my illness draws out. I can’t see anything sobbing into Lin’s shoulder, but I can hear what’s around us - the sounds of my tribe, the patterns of how we talk and the fire and the dogs and the sound of someone singing; and the sounds of Ba Sing Se, animal hooves of the dirt roads outside Lin’s home, the cooing of the doves her neighbor keeps for food, the musical rise and fall of her language.

It sounds wrong. I wish I could say it was comforting to hear both of our lives fitted together, but all I can think about is that even with Lin here with me, the dreamscape is unstable enough that it feels like I’m alone. I remember - before I was sick, Lin’s presence stabilized the dreamscape. It used to be that when I was alone, the dreamscape would bleed between all of the different places we knew, but with Lin there, with Lin seeing what I was seeing, the dreamscape was stable. Or at least _more_ stable, not as prone to twisting when no one was looking.

With Lin here it shouldn’t be _doing_ this.

“Seta,” Lin sighs into my hair. Her arms loosen a little when I start to cough, but they’re still a warm weight against my lower back, holding me close to her. “You can’t keep doing this. It’s been a year, and it feels like every day it takes longer for you to come back to me. And sure, you have good days sometimes, but every time that only heralds your illness taking a turn for the worse.”

“It’s only been a year,” I repeat, turning my head slightly so my words aren’t muffled by her shirt. “That’s nothing. Tannesuma said some people go two or three years. Pakasariay said he’d heard of someone who was sick for ten.”

“You won’t last that long.” Lin lifts one hand from the small of my back to rub at my back between my shoulder blades. “You managed to regain some weight during your last good spell, but that’s all gone now.”

“The only way out is through,” I say, but I’ve tucked my face back against her shoulder so I don’t know if she really heard.

I can practically feel her frowning. I drift a little in the silence, even with Lin to distract me. Not much, but of all the broken voices, only those of my tribe are distinct enough for me to make out words.

“Have you tried asking Tannesuma?” Lin asks, pulling me back from my drifting. “You say that she’s told you stories, and you say that you won’t live if she has to tell you everything. I don’t think you’ve told me that you’ve actually asked her. What’s the end point, Seta? When is this over? What if this is something else she can’t tell you until you ask?”

The voices of the spirits seem to surge at her words, but I ignore them.

“I don’t - I don’t _know_.” My voice breaks a little on that last word. “The only way out is through,” I repeat, gripping Lin’s shirt tight enough to make it wrinkle, “but I don’t know how it’s supposed to end. Lin, I don't-”

I start coughing again, and Lin holds me though it. This time, when I’m done, she pulls back a little more, her hands settling on my hips to keep me close.

“Here,” she says after a moment, wrapping an arm around my waist and leading me over to one of the wood and stone buildings that morphs into her home as we get closer. We step over the high threshold, and Lin settles me down on a cushion of the stone floor.

She keeps one hand around my wrist as she reaches for the tea pot and the box holding the tea leaves, which appear under her searching hand. The water in the kettle is at the perfect temperature to be poured when Lin reaches for it, and she pours it into the teapot, and when she pours the tea from the teapot only moments later, it comes out the perfect shade, having steeped the exact amount of time necessary, and cool enough to drink.

The measured movement of her free hand hypnotises me, mirroring the slight tug on my wrist as she moves. The show is comforting in its normality and its simplicity - I don’t know how many times I’ve sat here watching her do this, her confidence in the ritual allowing her to push the dreamscape just that little bit, long before I’d started deteriorating and setting the dreamscape loose. I can still hear my tribe outside the walls of Lin’s home, but inside I can’t see anything off, Lin’s certainty in her familiarity with her home holding everything in place.

When I’ve finished one cup of tea, Lin pours me another, finally settling down next to me and wrapping her arm around my waist again.

“You need to ask Tannesuma how this is going to end,” she says.

I bite my lip, toying with my cup of tea, careful not to spill.

“I don’t know if I can.” I toss the tea back too fast, still hot enough that it burns a little on the way down. It would have been the perfect temperature for sipping. I set my tea cup down and stare straight ahead. “I told you I’m having trouble remaining . . . aware? . . . Of the normal world when I’m awake. I drift away in the middle of conversations, and I don’t know . . .”

Lin is silent for a long moment. I don’t dare turn to look at her. Then she sighs.

“You need to ask her,” Lin says. She reaches up to tug lightly at one of my braids. “If it’s that bad, then you need to ask her. If asking’s the key, then she can help you when you are aware enough, and wait while you aren’t. You need to see if there’s a way to end this.”

“Alright,” I say. “I - alright.”

* * *

“What’s wrong?” Hurekina asks, his eyes zeroing in on whatever expression it is I’m wearing in the firelight as he pulls back from his greeting.

Firelight, firelight, that’s all I see nowadays. Tannesuma won’t let me go outside for fear that the cold, dry air will make my cough worse.

“I asked Tannesuma if there was anything we could do again,” I say.

Hurekina immediately scowls as he drops down to sit next to me on my furs. “Seta, you know -”

“She said there was,” I interrupt him. “I guess I finally managed to ask her the right way.”

“What?” Hurekina asks, bolting upright. “Why didn’t she say anything before?”

“I don’t think she could.” I watch him pace back and forth. “I had to be the one to ask.” He doesn’t answer, and I pull my furs closer. “Hurekina!” I say sharply.

He turns to look at me, his expression blank.

“The cure is for me to become a shaman,” I tell him. “She couldn’t ask me that. It’s always a path that the shaman has to choose on their own, remember? It can’t be asked.” I blink away the blurriness and sniff.

“Right,” Hurekina says, his face losing the blankness. He sinks down to sit next to me again and studies my face. Then, softer and with an air of ritual, “Right. I know that look.”

Even like this, I have to stifle a smile as I lean in to bury my face in his shoulder. “I’m scared,” I tell him, like I used to when I was little, and I was scared of what was around every corner and what was hidden in the darkness and what was lurking at the edge of camp to steal me away like they’d stolen my twin. We’d both - separately and later together - been very good at escaping our watchers, and I hadn’t gone to Hurekina purposefully, but he’d find me crying before the crowd of adults came looking for the both of us often enough that we had our own little ritual. I smile a little, remembering, even though it’s been a couple years since we did this.

“And what are you scared of, Seta?” Hurekina asks, holding me close.

“I’m scared I won’t be happy,” I tell him. “I worked so hard to get where I am now, to convince the elders to let me wear the pattern of a young hunter. And now I have to let all of that go?”

“Be scared then. You're scared for a reason, so I won’t tell you to stop. But don’t let it stop you,” Hurekina says.

I laugh a little at the familiar words, feeling the tears start to dampen his shoulder under my eyes.

* * *

“Are you sure about this?” Dad asks. He’s sitting in front of me with a brush, painting my face with the pattern of a young hunter of the Rabbit Fox Tribe for the last time.

I have to remember not to bite my lip or frown, and mess up the paint. It took me forever to convince the elders that I deserve this pattern, and here I am, giving it up. I take a deep breath and manage a smile for Dad as he pulls back slightly.

“Yeah. I have to do this.”

“Right,” Dad says. He smiles back, the expression lighting up his normal stoicness. “I’m proud of you,” he says, only hesitating slightly, “Seta.”

“Thank you Dad.”

Pakasariay touches my shoulder. He nods when I look up at him, so I gather myself and move to sit down across the fire from Tannesuma. Pakasariay sits down to my right, at the halfway point between me and Tannesuma, and my parents stand behind me, my Mom brushing a gentle hand across my shoulders.

I look up for a moment, at the wood and sod blocking my view of the night sky. Tannesuma had chosen tonight for this ceremony in part because the spirits told her there would be a meteor shower. I hadn’t seen it when I left my parents’ ena for the last time to prepare for the ceremony in Tannesuma’s ena around noon, and it’s likely I won’t see it when the ceremony is over either. 

I don’t know how aware I’ll be.

Pakasariay watches Tannesuma, his drum at the ready. At the signal of her breath, he begins the beat. With the first strike against the drum, the clamour of the spirits falls silent.

Not just some of them, not just Water Tribe spirits abandoning their fights over an unclaimed shaman to listen to one who has an enforcer - all of them. I can feel their attention centering on me as Tannesuma hums low and deep enough that my bones buzz and I'm not entirely sure she's the only one humming.

Then Tannesuma let out a moan from deep in her throat as her head falls back, but I can't concentrate on that because standing there, behind her shoulder and entirely see through, is a woman who must be Tannesuma's guardian, wearing a shaman's mask of her own.

And beside her is Peisunay, just as see through as he grins back at me, his face unmarked by the infected burn that took his life. I remember when he died, slipping away between one breath and the next and I remember wondering when I would follow.

And beside him is Perespato, holding his hand and leaning into his side with a smile that deepens the lines on his face. And next to both of them is Kiwkup, grinning at me, his arms around an oddly tolerant rabbit fox, its hind legs left to dangle. The rabbit fox meets my eyes with its own, unnaturally blue eyes. It winks, then smiles, the expression somehow managing not to look grotesque or threatened on its animal face.

And behind them- generations, not fitting into the small space of the ena, but expanding it.

And more of them come as Tannesuma starts chanting, calling for all spirits interested.

I see the animal representations of other tribes - a sea wolf swimming through the air above us with its characteristic black and white coloring, a stately caribou bear sliding through the human members of its tribe, a small snowy puffin owl swimming through the frozen ground beneath us.

I see Fire Nation soldiers, some barely more than shadows hiding beneath their skull faceplates, others with their helmets off, breathing out snow with every breath.

I see spirits of the sea - whales that are only whales, penguins that are only penguins -of the land - a moose with its massive rack of antlers - of the sky - a snowy owl balanced on one of the moose’s antlers.

I see earth spirits whose forms flicker between massive versions of the puppets in the shows my northern cousins pulled me to watch, more normal bodies with their distinctive masks, and humans who disappear into the crowd.

As more and more spirits appear, their voices return; chattering voices, bird calls, foxes yelping, bears huffing.

And in front of me, like an island of stillness in the milling crowd, stands a man with burning gold eyes. The flickering of his face as it changes from human to living mask and back is the only movement on him.

As Tannesuma begins the final invocation for spirits of order and chaos, for the spirits without element, the spirits of Inari, the man turns his face skyward.

I follow his gaze up, and my eyes go wide. Above us are the stars I’d thought about briefly at the beginning of the ceremony, flurries of them flying across the sky and falling. I think, as I look back down, that some of them almost look like they’re falling towards us.

Tannesuma had walked me through the ceremony beforehand, and while she hadn’t been able or willing to tell me the exact words she would use, Pakasariay had sat with me and gone over the different patterns he would be drumming for the different sections of the ritual. Through the noise of the crowd, or perhaps because it’s the beat underpinning the rhythm of all the voices, I can hear Pakasariay drawing the call for interested parties to a close, matching Tannesuma’s voice as they prepare for calling the caller.

The man with gold eyes grins at me, then he steps back and is absorbed by the crowd.

And between us, the fire flares up, sending sparks everywhere and embers scattering across the ground. I scramble back, even as I realize that there’s someone crouching in the fire, the flames below them casting moving shadows that hide their face.

“Seta, what are you doing?” Tannesuma says, sending a chill up my spine as the crowd starts whispering again. “Get out of the fire.”

“That’s not-”

“Ow,” the figure in the fire mutters, slowly standing, their voice loud against the whispering. “Face stealer take your mask Tukaykup, that was supposed to be gentle.”

“Seta?”

“That’s not me,” I repeat, staring at the figure standing in the fire.

“What is a star doing here?” Tannesuma’s guardian asks abruptly, stepping around the fire to my left so that she’s across from Pakasariay, between Tannesuma and me, and facing the person in the fire.

“I was invited. The spirits of the ocean land and sky, the spirits of order and chaos, the spirits without element, the spirits of Inari. Thus was I called,” the spirit standing in the flames says. Then, cockily, like this ritual doesn’t determine my life, “Don’t you remember?”

“And yet I have never heard of a star answering this call before. What is a star doing here?”

“I was invited as a spirit of the tribe, of the family,” the spirit replies, less cocky and more serious.

Family. I search what I can see of the figure’s face. They claim they’re family. Not just tribe, _family_. Theoretically, that could go back centuries. Few spirits stick around for that long, but who knows how long a star lives?

“Other stars with such a claim have not come down for such a call as this,” Tannesuma’s guardian states, Tannesuma’s voice echoing under her distantly, the worlds oddly shaped. “This is the Call for the guardian of Seta, son of Atomte and Kina, twin to Kore, Lord La’s to claim by Inari’s grace, of Kisarshumari’s people, untethered, bound to one unknown. What is a star doing here?”

I feel a shiver go up my spine at her frank rectial of my full and formal name, and at the part she’d added that Tannesuma hadn’t gone over with me - _bound to one unknown_.

The star turns to look at me. They finally step out of the fire to stand before me, and without the movement of the shadows the fire had cast, I can actually see their features, lit from within by the glow he emits. His eyes are terribly knowing as he extends a hand to me. He looks like my reflection in the water.

“I am here by right of caller.”

It clicks. I know exactly the member of my family who became a star.

“Kore,” I breathe.

“Seta,” he replies, his hand not wavering. He says, “I am Kore, son of Atomte and Kina, twin to Seta, no longer Lord La’s to claim by Inari’s grace, no longer of Kisarshumari’s people, now a star in the sky by the grace of Lord Tukaykup of Indigo Skies. I am here by right of caller, and I am here to answer the call.”

I glance first to Tannesuma’s guardian, as a spirit, as a shaman who would know what this means, as someone who Tannesuma must trust. She in turn glances at Tannesuma, somewhere behind the fire, before she nods.

I look second to Perespato and Peisunay, just visible behind Kore, as members of my tribe, as my elders, as my family in the absence of my parents behind me, gone at some point before the scattering embers made me scramble back. They nod.

I look finally to the man with gold eyes as he appears at my right elbow. This time, when his unfamiliar mask flickers away, it reveals a face painted in a familiar pattern. It reveals story paint, ritual paint, paint in the pattern of the great Spirit of the Dawn, who we celebrate every spring when the sun returns to us after a long winter without.

This time I’m not the only one who sees him - someone in the crowd says, “Sinekaykup!”, and

the cry gets taken up by others, calling out “Sinekaykup! and “Orange Skies!” and “Ryung!”, and other titles and names for the Spirit of the Dawn until he raises his hand and they go quiet.

“Seta,” he says, but I can’t even really concentrate on that because _there is a major spirit at my healing ritual_.

I reach up to grab Kore’s hand as Sinekaykup opens his mouth.

Sinekapkup blinks - I think in surprise, but it’s hard to tell with the wood masks flickering back into existence over his face, then he throws his head back and laughs.

“Seta!” he says again, sounding delighted.

And then he’s _gone_. And all of the spirits except Kore and the shaman spirit are gone, and the ena collapses back down to the space it had originally had, and I can feel my parents’ legs behind me, crowded up against me as Kore steps to the side, steps to my side.

And Pakasariay’s drum goes silent., shaking away the last of the trance as I lock eyes with Tannesuma across the fire. Her eyes are wide through the eyeholes of her mask, and I get the feeling that she’s pale under it, which reminds me-

I reach up to touch my face. My fingers come away clean. I stare at them for a long moment. I don’t remember wiping off my paint.

Then Tannesuma lets out a long, shivery sign and she stands. Pakasariay quickly sets aside the drum and moves to help her to her feet. She moves around the fire, reaching out to the shaman spirit who stayed behind and tangles their fingers.

Kore tugs lightly on my hand, and I finally remember to stand up.

Tannesuma raches up with her free hand to cup my cheek. She seems to be searching for something in my eyes, glancing over to Kore every couple seconds, but after a long, drawn out moment she smiles as she steps back. She nods at me.

I nod back and turn.

Behind me, Mom manages a slight smile as she presents a pack to me. My dad only nods as he presents me with a bundle of furs before he steps aside, tugging Mom with him so the way to the door is clear.

I look up at Kore, then we take the first step together. We climb out of the ena. We get out of camp. We get out of eyesight, and then we keep walking and walking until my feet hurt, and then we walk some more, hand in hand.

And the entire time, the only sound I can hear is the crunch of snow and gravel under our boots. The only voice in my head is my own running commentary.

And we just keep walking across the ice and the snow and the rock - in the distance I can see the pine forest my tribe is heading towards soon, but we never seem to get any closer. Above us is the dark night sky, the last of the promised meteor shower shooting across it every once in a while.

And then I open my eyes.

I almost don’t recognize where I am, even though I’ve been here almost every night I can remember. I’m sitting on top of the wall that goes around the small garden attached to Lin’s house, and I recognise that, but my mind keeps insisting that I’m at my cousin’s house in the Southern Earth Kingdoms because the dreamscape around me is solid in a way it’s never been as far back as I can remember. There's none of the mixing of sounds that had become common over the past year, but neither is the world hazy and twisting around the edges the way it had been before I got sick.

“Seta?” Lin asks behind me. I twist around to look at her, but she’s not looking at me, her eyes focused somewhere behind me, and I twist around the other way, and there’s Kore.

“Oh,” I say, the sound small.

Tannesuma told me that the spirit who chose me would appear first and likely only in this dream to teach me their song and dance, to teach me how to ask for their attention. The spirits we interact with as shamans apparently don’t like to manifest visually, and so only show themselves when necessary, speaking to us without form the rest of the time.

I hadn’t been sure how my caller, now my guardian would appear in a dream when my dreams are already full.

Apparently, like this, sliding into place like a missing pottery shard I hadn’t even noticed was missing. As I bite my lip, I wonder if it will be like this with every spirit I meet, because Tannesuma told me that my guardian will always be my closest of the spirits I meet who want to stay with me over the years.

I swing my legs over and slip off the wall, the sound of my feet hitting the ground drawing Lin’s attention away from Kore. She immediately reaches out to gather me up and tuck me next to her, up against her side, before her gaze returns to Kore on the wall, still looking out down the street as if he hadn’t heard us.

“Hello?” Lin calls.

Kore finally turns, twisting around to look at us.

Lin goes still next to me for a long moment, not even breathing as she stares at him. Then she glances from him to me, me to him.

Kore sits still under her gaze, his expression cold and foreboding.

Only . . . only I know my own face. Only I know that expression, I remember that expression from not so long ago, when Fire Nation soldiers ran rampant over the South Pole on some rumor, remember it from sitting huddled under my furs in Tannesuma’s ena, high on the best painkillers we had (traded for in the Earth Kingdoms with armour we took off of Fire corpses and luxuries we stole from their frozen ships), remember holding the knife and wondering if I would be turning it to the soldier who burst in or on myself. I could see my face in the polished copper mirror by the entrance that Tannesuma was saving for the next trip north to trade for more medicines we can’t grow here.

To my eyes, Kore looks scared.

“Kore,” I repeat, stepping forwards and dragging Lin with me.

“Seta.” He glances sideways, then back down at us. “I thought I’d imagined this.”

“Kore,” Lin breathes, and this time she’s the one dragging me forwards so we’re standing at the base of the wall, looking up at him. She lets go of my hand and reaches up with both hands for Kore.

He stares down at her for a long moment, then he nods, and she grabs him carefully and lifts him off the wall - waiting just long enough for him to throw his legs over - and sets him down on the ground. Then she grabs his right hand and flips it over so she can look at his palm. It’s a familiar gesture, one I remember her doing more when I was younger. There’s nothing on my palm, but on Kore’s I can see the splotchy red of a birthmark.

“Kore,” she repeats, and, “I thought I’d imagined you.”

Kore’s expression wobbles as he stares up at her, and his eyes are suspiciously shiny. He takes a step forward, then pauses halfway into her open arms to glance over at me.

I blink at him, then nod, and he throws himself across the remaining handbreadth separating him from Lin hard enough to make her grunt and stumble slightly as she folds around him.

Watching them together makes me feel strange, in a different way than the sickness I’ve had for a year. Kore’s dressed the same as I am, his hair is the same as mine, and watching them, my body feels tight, like it doesn’t exist, like I’m disassociating, projecting my spirit from my body and watching myself from the outside. I can hear Kore saying Lin’s name, even though we never said her name.

And I don’t-

I _can’t_ \- . . .

I wait for them to stop.

When they finally pull away from each other, their eyes are both red, and there’s a dark patch on Lin’s robes.

Kore turns to look at me and he tilts his head.

We say at the same time, “The dance,” and we nod at the same time, and we reach out to clutch each others’ hands in a way that sets my heart pounding as we move like we’ve already set ourselves to the beating of a drum.

And then Lin moves as we settle into circling each other, and I can see her out of the corner of my eyes, watch as she produces her own drum, the one that she’d been going to the temple to learn how to play, watch her shift, _one two_ , bobbing in time with our steps as she raises her hand-

We’re lost the moment she hits the drum, all three of us. We’re lost and we’re found as the world clicks back into place like a dislocated shoulder back into the joint, like a bone being set right, and it hurts and it aches but we’re all better for it.

Kore almost doesn’t have to teach me anything. The song he sings over the pounding of the drum is almost the song I make up for myself, the dance he dances is almost the dance I dance, and when he claws at the sky and _pulls_ , I have no trouble dancing it on ice.

And through it all is Lin on her drum, picking up the song a verse behind me and adding a third voice to our cries, always constant, always consistent, always my anchor in the storm, my foundation in a world that doesn’t always want me. I already know that when I wake up, I will need to negotiate with our normal merchants for a Northern Earth drum, or else head north to my cousins to find one myself, no matter how poorly the drum holds up to arctic conditions. The song will never sound right on an Imiq drum, not after I heard it the way it was meant to be heard the first time I truly heard it.

I learn Kore’s dance, and then we dance.

The sun sets, and we dance.

The sun rises, and we dance.

Three more times the sun sets and rises, for what value that has in this dream, once for each element.

We dance through it all, and by the end my lungs are burning and my limbs and side are cramping, my voice little more than a hoarse whisper.

Then Lin hits the final stroke, Kore and I take the final step, and everything just . . . stops. There’s silence outside our harsh panting as we struggle to take in enough air.

Then Lin, ever practical Lin, sets aside her drum and reaches for us. She takes our hands and leads us across the ice under the sun to the ena sitting across the clearing in the pines. We go down through the tunnel, one by one, and emerge in the hot, humid air of the luxury bath house Lin’s mother once worked in.

I go to follow Lin’s example of stripping, tugging at my parka, when I pause, my gaze settling on Kore.

He catches my gaze, his parka already off, and gives me a soft smile. “Seta,” he says, dipping his head. “Brother.”

My hands tremble a little as I watch him go back to stripping, but I slowly start pulling my clothes off. That felt like confirmation, but I still don’t _know_ -

I can’t get out of this. I can feel the implacable weight of tradition bearing down on me. The only way out is through, that was true of the sickness, it was true of the ceremony, it was true of the dancing, it is true for _this_ , whatever this is.

I pause for a moment, looking at Kore again. I remember thinking-

He looks like my reflection. Or maybe it’s that _I_ look like _his_ reflection.

That’s nice.

That’s-

Lin steps in front of me, blocking my view of Kore. She grabs my hand where I’m picking at the bottom of my parka.

“Hey,” she says, green eyes searching mine. “You don’t have to.”

“But I-”

“No,” she says firmly. “You don't’ have to.” She glances up momentarily, like she’s looking for the great Spirits looking down at us from the sky, before looking back at me. “The bath houses are places to relax. I will not allow anything else, my Mama taught me better. There are enough pools and benches that each of us could have a room to ourselves.”

I can’t help but smile shakily at her, feeling a rush of relief at her words. I shake my head anyways, squeezing her hands back. “I can’t. I have to do this. I won’t be able to relax until  
I know. I have to know. I don’t care if he sees, I don’t care if he knows, I don’t care if he hates me for it, I can deal with anything as long as I’m not waiting for the other shoe to drop. I have to know first.”

Lin’s lips thin, then she says, “You don’t have to tell him. Ah!” she shushes me as I start to protest. “I could tell him.”

I blink, then I nod. My shoulders slump as I watch her turn around, the bravado I was building up draining out of me abruptly.

Lin can cut an imposing figure when she wants to. She’s three years older than Kore and me, with an extra head of height to show for it, and she’s built along the same stocky lines as many of the people I’ve seen populating the Ba Sing Se of our dreams.

But right now she’s not wearing a scrap of clothing, and the person she’s facing is a spirit, and a spirit of the stars no less. There aren’t many stories about spirits of the stars, and most end when someone climbs into the sky or when they’re placed there. But those that don’t . . . make it clear that stars know how to _hurt_.

I smooth trembling hands down over the fur of my parka. As much as I’d been grateful for her offer, I’m suddenly just as afraid.

“Do you know?” Lin asks.

“Know what?” Kore glances up, finger hooked into the waist of his trousers, ready to pull them down and abandon them with the rest of his clothing.

Lin tilts her head, then, not bothering to dance around the topic, she cups her breasts with her hands, then points back at me.

“Yes,” Kore replies, equally as blunt.

“. . . And?”

“My brother is my brother is my brother is my brother is what he calls himself is what he is as long as he wants,” Kore says easily, shrugging.

And Lin turns to me, but I’m already tugging the outer layer of my parkas over my head and turning to put it on the drying rack.

The inner layer follows it quickly, and then I pause, my upper half bare, to look over at Kore. He’s not looking at me, but watching Lin intently as she goes over what to do in a Northern Earth Kingdom bathhouse and holds out different vials of scented oil for him to decide which to use.

He glances over after a moment to meet my eyes. He gives me an obvious onceover at my quirked eyebrow, meets my eyes again, nods, then turns back to Lin.

I try not to tremble in relief as I finish stripping and hanging my clothes so the leather will dry properly, even though I know that it doesn’t need to in this dream.

Lin slips out as I finish, holding her own eucalyptus scented bath beans[2] and hair oil. Eucalyptus, she’s told me, is what she uses outside of these dreams, because she likes the sharp smell and because it’s one of the less expensive smells.

I head over to Kore as he contemplates several vials of scented oil, looking indecisive.

“Not that it matters much,” I say gently, reaching out to tap one of the vials Kore is holding, “but while I’m here, I use the clove and cinnamon.”

Kore blinks at me, as I slide past him to grab the bath beans and hair oil. His footsteps follow me into the washing room a couple seconds later.

I sit down on one of the benches and set the bath bean bar and the vial of oil down on the short wall where they won’t get knocked over, then I reach us to pick my hair out of the two braids I keep it in. When I finally shake out my hair, the brown strands are all wavy and my hair feels like a cloud as the different waves of the strands add volume.

Kore’s watching me when I glance up, hesitantly undoing his own braids, while Lin’s already scrubbing herself down. Her hair goes down much easier than mine, the bun falling apart without much provocation after she’s taken out the tie and the stick, so that’s no surprise.

My first bucket of water is old rice water, and I gasp a little as it pours over me, flattening my hair. With that done, I comb my fingers through my hair again, getting the water all through it and making sure every strand is wet.

Lin starts calling out instructions to Kore as I wipe my eyes and reach for the bath bean bar. I pause when I get a good look at it. I hadn’t noticed earlier, but the shop name impressed on the bar wasn’t the one I normally saw on the bath beans here at the bath house Lin’s mother had worked at. Instead, the name on the bar is the shop where Lin gets the cheaper bath beans that she uses to wash at home. And sure enough, when I raise the bar up to sniff at it, it smells different, many of the herbs that the bath house’s supplier uses missing and the smell of cloves coming through clearer for that lack, though less strongly.

I frown a little as I lower the bar, then reach for the washcloth. I don’t mind, but I’m not entirely sure why I would get this bar rather than the good bath beans I normally see here. This reminds me of . . .

Lin’s bath beans are always the ones she uses at home, changing from the bath houses when she picks them up from the shelf. We’d both figured it was something to do with expectations, she was used to the cheaper bath beans so when she went to wash in this changeable dream world, that’s what she found.

I don’t use bath beans when I’m awake, so I don’t have any expectations beyond the clove bath beans I normally use. But Lin . . .

I shake my head and start scrubbing myself. After the first pass I dump a bucket of water over myself again, this time just plain hot water to wash away the residue of the rice water and the bath beans.

When I’m done washing, after a few more rounds of scrubbing, I pull on one of the bath houses’s simple cotton yukata - not to cover up, but because that’s what Lin says a boy would do in a Ba Sing Se bathhouse - and I grab the hair oil and a comb.

“Seta,” Lin calls softly, making me glance over. With her head start and experience, Lin had finished washing long enough before us that she’s had time to finish drawing the oil through her hair and putting it up again. She’s not wearing a bathrobe because this is a dream and she doesn’t care about pretense. She lifts her comb in my direction. “Want help?”

“Please.” I move quickly in her direction and throw one leg over her bench to straddle it, facing away from her. I pass her my oils and comb, and close my eyes and tilt my head back to let her at my hair.

Her fingers feel nice in my hair, running through the brown strands made straight and dark by the water as she rubs the oil into my scalp first, the familiar smell of cinnamon and cloves filling the air as the oil warms. This close, I can catch the smell of some of Lin’s eucalyptus oil mingling with it. She carefully parts my hair, sectioning it out with her pinky and the comb as she starts combing the oil down, careful to evenly distribute the oil.

There’s the sound of shifting and cloth rustling in front of me eventually, and I open my eyes to look at Kore, standing before me in a bathrobe, holding a vial of oil and a comb, presenting them both on flat palms.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he says.

I blink slowly, considering that statement, then reach out.

“You can sit,” I tell him, indicating the space before me on the bench. There’s enough room for him to sit, but he won’t have to straddle it like I do.

He sits, back still, facing away from me. I don’t tell him to turn so he can watch and learn (there’s enough time for that later, when we’re not ritually binding ourselves to each other), just set down the comb and the oil and reach for his hair.

I oil his hair. He’d chosen amber and camphor, and when I close my eyes, it almost feels like I’m in the small temple my cousins in the north have, the one I’d helped them rebuild with fresh wood for the new cycle, with amber and camphor incense burning on the plate on the altar, blending with the cinnamon-clove of the spiced tea they imported from Chameleon Bay.

When we’re all done with our hair and have it up, we finally move to the soaking pools. I ditch the robe, letting the cloth crumble in the basket placed out for just that purpose before I settle down into the water.

The water, heated by the stove under the bath this far from volcanic activity, almost reminds me of the firebaths we have at home in the summer, when we move inland again and into the forests. It’s easier to breathe here however, and I sink as low as I can, only emerging occasionally to reach for the cup of cool tea set on the lip of the bath.

Eventually we get out of the pool. Lin and I put on fresh robes for sleeping in, and Kore, after watching us for a moment, produces his own set, cut in a different style that looks more like what our cousins wear.

The door we leave through takes us to a room that probably couldn’t exist in real life, sod blocks composing two of the walls like my people's houses and the other two walls the combination of stone slabs and wood and mud-plaster characteristic of Ba Sing Se. The room’s small enough that the straw filled mattress and furs take up all the floor space. There’s just enough space for the three of us to lie down on our backs side by side.

Lin lies down first, and I curl up next to her easily enough. Kore lingers in the doorway until I turn over and pat the space next to me in invitation. He slides under the furs, and even through our sleeping robes I can feel the heat of his body, warmer than Lin on my other side, as if he’d just emerged from the soaking pool.

I go to sleep.

* * *

1\. An ena is a sod house, used by the women and girls of the Yup'ik people according to Wikipedia. [ back ]

2\. Soap as we use it now was introduced fairly recently to China. Prior to that, one of the products used to clean was a product called bath beans, which were supposedly made of, in part, dried, powdered pig's pancreas. I believe they were actually formed into bean-like pellets, hence the name, however I made them into bars here because . . . that's how I think of soap. [ back ]


	2. The South Pole, Spring Forest

**Seta of the Rabbit Fox Tribe**

* * *

**The South Pole, Rabbit Fox Tribe Spring Forest, 93 AG**

I wake up in the roots of a pine tree, warm and safe. I wake up buried under the furs I took and under a pile of rabbit foxes. there’ one right in front of my face, making a low rumbling noise, and as I blink at it, it nuzzles against my nose. Other rabbit foxes make little noises of discontent as I sit up, making them slide to the side as the furs move.

I go to rub my eyes, then pause at the sight of my hand. There’s something reddish brown smeared on my fingers. I touch my face lightly with my clean pinky, and blink at the fresh red that comes off. It takes me a moment to remember - this must be the pattern of my shaman mask.

And my hair - I rub the paint off my fingers and onto the bark of the roots around my before I reach up to touch my hair. It’s dry, even though it’s in the same loose bun I’d put it in to sleep in my dream, but I can also feel the beads that Tannesuma had tucked into my sack threaded onto the strands as I pat my head.

I get up. I pause at the sight of the lemming vole corpse in the snow, blood seeping from wounds as some of the rabbit foxes who’d been sleeping with me nose at it. My hand goes up to my face again, hovering over the drying substance I can feel before I force it down. Without the fur blankets, the cold of the snow in the shadow of the tree fels more pressing, but I force myself not to move as I watch the rabbit foxes make up their minds and start tearing apart the lemming vole to eat it.

When they’re done, I carefully pack my furs back up and lift them onto my back. Most of the rabbit foxes disappear as I do so, but when I’m done, there’s still one waiting for me. I stare down at the animal associated with my tribe’s spirit. The rabbit fox turns first, darting off into the woods. It pauses just before I lose sight of it, blinking back at me. I heft my pack and follow it as it darts off again, always just out of reach, always just within sight.

It leads me home. The woods slowly resolve themselves into more familiar trees, the tree where I learned how to climb, the one I fell out of, the one where the branch broke under my weight, until I’m not so much following the rabbit fox as heading in the same direction.

My tribe had moved, like they were supposed to. My steps pick up at the sound of voices through the trees until the last one between me and the clearing is gone, and I pause, watching kids play and adults talk and work around the fires.

It’s one of the groups of kids that notice me first, and they run screaming at me, startling some of the sled fox dogs, who come yelping and running after them.

“Seta! Seta! Seta!”

“You’re back!”

“Your face paint looks kinda like Tannesuma’s shaman mask!”

“Does that mean you’re a shaman Seta?”

“Seta! Look at my doll! I made her with pine needles like you told me to!”

“Seta! What do spirits sound like? Could you hear my auntie?”

“Children! Let Seta breathe!” Tannesuma says, emerging from the crowd of people who’d been gathering around me. Our foreheads knock gently together in greeting, and Tannesuma leans forwards to press her nose against my cheek. We breathe for a moment. Then she steps back, some of the blood from my face on her nose and forehead. She sets her hands on my shoulders and looks into my eyes. I look back for a moment before I catch my parents moving through the crowd behind her. She shakes me gently to get my attention back. “You alright?”

I smile back. And - I hadn’t noticed when I woke up because the dream took forever just as much as it took no time at all, but the voices - the _spirits_ \- are gone. “I’m alright.”

“Good,” Tannesuma says. She steps back, letting my parents come forwards.

* * *

Tannesuma tells me I was gone for four days as she paints the mask I’d carved before I left with the pattern of blood on my face. The first time I will truly call upon Kore, binding us permanently together will be in another four days when we hold the festival celebrating the beginning of spring. Tannesuma frowns as she tells me this, turning away.

I ask her, “Did I do something wrong?”

“No,” Tannesuma says simply, setting the paintbrush down and looking at the mask cradled in her lap. “Just, you keep hitting lucky signs and holy numbers. We held your ceremony four and seven months to the day you fell ill, on the night of a meteor shower, your Wandering Dream was four days long, and you first Call for Response four days after it and seven days after the tribe moved, and it will be for a major festival, the turning of one of the four seasons, and there will be four major participants. You’re turning thirteen now, but you’ll be fully trained at fourteen, the end of your second seven year cycle. And as much as you and I joke about it, you _are_ a twin.”

She turns to look me in the eyes. Four - for the elements; water , earth, fire, air. Seven - for the Great Spirits; Inari, Tui, La, Kun, Agni, Makani, Era.

“I’m worried,” she says, “about what is coming that you will need all that luck.”

She turns again, reaching towards the stack of moss for me, so I can wipe the blood off my face.

* * *

My hair smells like cinnamon and cloves when I let it down from the bun to put it back into braids.

* * *

I stay with Tannesuma for the four days before the spring festival. It’s not really a big difference from the past year - other than my occasional good spell where I’d gone home to my parents, I’ve been staying in her home right along with everyone else who’s sick or injured.

This time, rather than sickness, it’s for the ritual symbolism. The spring festival is the one Apto and Hurekina had been making their outfits for - it’s the one they’re going to celebrate the end of their second cycle with. I’m thirteen, a year too young to be a normal participant, but spending this time away from my parents holds a similar meaning.

Apto and Hurekina and the other two who were actually turning fourteen this year had set up their own camp a good way away from the main camp when our tribe had moved into the forest, where they were hunting and fishing to prove that they could support themselves. The main camp feels lonely without the twins, for all that Tannesuma’s already filling my time teaching me how to be a shaman and what to do for the spring ritual.

My dreams feel wrong with just Lin and me. We don’t talk about it, but it’s enough to make me refuse to leave the blankets even when my body feels sore from not moving and the entire world feels unstable in the same way it had when I was sick. Lin just lets me hold tight to her wrist or her ankle as I fight off the phantom feeling of a cough.

* * *

The morning of the spring festival dawns. The four who’d spent the week in a separate camp come whooping into the town on their dog sleds.

The whole village seems to come alive, children streaming out of enas and the qasgiq[3] before their parents and everyone else follows them out, forming a loose semicircle around the sleds. Once a majority of the village is out, the four all reach into their sleds and pull out fat, white goose ducks to hold above their heads.

The crowd lets out a cheer, and I can feel a smile on my own lips under my mask. Goose ducks are traditionally the luckiest animal you can bring back for your spring festival, so one for each hunter is great luck. My smile fades a little as I consider that.

Tannesuma’s words echo back to me. _I worry about what is coming that you will need all that luck_.

I shake my head and follow Tannesuma towards the sleds as the semicircle breaks apart and people go to finish the last of the preparations for the festival. I pause to scratch some of the sled fox dog’s ears on the way.

Apto is grinning as she lets me take the goose duck from her while Hurekina struggles his way out of the crowd around his sled.

“Seta! You’re back!” Apto says, wrapping me up in a hug. She steps back as Hurekina finally gets free so he can hand me his goose duck and fold me in his own hug.

“And you’re alright now?” Hurekina asks, holding me close.

“Haven’t had the urge to cough in the past four days,” I tell him easily, pushing back a little so I can touch my forehead to his and my nose to his cheek and we can breathe together for a moment.

“So, did you see anyone you knew?” Apto asks when I pull back. “Tannesuma wouldn’t tell anyone anything about your ceremony, and even Pakasariay is refusing to say what he heard so you know it’s serious. Not that he would have told us who your guardian is, but he’ll usually at least say if he heard someone we know among the dead.”

“He-” I cut myself off and shake my head, reaching for her. We set our foreheads against each others’ and I take a deep breath. Outside of Lin in my dreams, Apto and Hurekina are the ones anchoring me here still. They’re the only ones of my friends who stuck around after I got sick, but they’d been my closest friends even before then. I don’t really blame the others, being sick did not make for interesting conversation, but distance is distance, neutral or cold. “It’s Kore,” I tell her quietly. “He’s my guardian. He really did go and become a star, and he grew up a star.”

Apto sucks in a breath as I step back, glancing at her own twin. With the noise of the crowd, he hadn’t heard me.

“Seta!” Tannesuma calls before Apto can say anything though, and I take another step back.

“I have to go,” I say.

“Right,” Apto says. She shakes her head. “Go. Do your shaman thing.”

Unspoken are the words, _we’ll talk about this later_.

* * *

We hold the ceremony that starts the spring festival not too long after that. Tannesuma and I have just enough time to set the goose ducks in the snow to freeze and pull our masks on before we’re all making our way to the central qasgiq. Someone had managed to get the fire in the middle lit, and flames were creeping up the wood.

As I come in, everyone’s putting on their own masks or face paint, and the chief is hanging the single waterbender’s mask we still have on the wall off to one side in remembrance of those who were taken from us. Even the children are sitting for their parents to put face paint on or insisting on doing it themselves, the boys with sloppy young hunter’s paint and the girls in their uneven mender’s paint.

People begin to settle as Pakasariay joins us, parents pulling their children in and picking them up, and other drummers coming over with their own drums. When all of the drummers are set up, Chief Isoun lets out a loud whistle, and finally the qasgiq goes quiet.

“Shaman Tannesuma, and Shaman Seta,” he announces, stepping aside. I feel a thrill at the sound of my new title.

There’s the rattle of caribou moose hooves from our ankles and wrists as we step forwards.

“Another year has passed,” Tannesuma announces to the qasgiq as a whole. “Another year, another cycle of the seasons, another generation.” She smiles over at the group of four who’d spent the last week in their own camp. “It’s the turning of the seasons, and the return of the sun, thanks be to Sinekaykup, and this year we’ve been blessed. Four will join us for their third turn.”

Tannesuma doesn’t speak of me becoming a shaman. I feel absurdly grateful for that. A blessing I might be to the tribe, but becoming a shaman had been a painful process. I feel better now, but I’m still scraped raw and wanting for parts of me that I lost to the sickness.

“And now,” Tannesuma says, stepping back, and leaving me alone before the tribe, “a Call for Response.”

I close my eyes and take my pose, caribou moose hooves rattling loudly in the silence.

Pakasariay’s first strike to the drum is deafening. The second sounds not too far behind, then strikes come faster as he sets the pace for the other drummers. They'll only be playing the base beat for me to dance to, but that only means that they need to be more sure of the time than usual.

My foot comes down with the first strike of the other drummers, and the world shifts around me like it had in Tannesuma’s ena when we called for my caller.

“Kore,” I breathe at the sight of him mirroring my movements.

I can’t see anything else new even with the shift in the world, but I hadn’t expected to. Tannesuma told me that even shamans only rarely saw spirits. Still, I can feel Kore’s palm press to mine as I dance out the shape of a circle, I can feel his boot meet mine in the center and providing the leverage to complete the turn, feel his forehead against mine and his nose on my cheek despite the mask on my face as he breathes before we both step back.

We dance until the dance is done, and though the dance ends, the world stays the same, the colors slightly too vibrant and the light too dim. We both step back, making way for Tannesuma, and I can feel the deliberate pressure of Kore’s hands against my parka as he moves to stand close behind me, chin on my shoulder.

Tannesuma dances. When she’s done with her dance, she turns to face the crowded qasgiq.

“We call upon La of the South!” Tannesuma declares. I shadow her as she takes several steps forwards to bend down and toss the carved mask from the ground into the fire. “La our Lord! La of the Deeps!”

The flare of the fire isn’t enough to distract me from a space that opens in the crowd for a moment, like someone is stepping into the clear space in the center and leaving behind a void, even though no one seems to move enough for that. For a moment, I think I catch sight of someone wearing a mask. I’d never been the best at making perfect circles, but Tannesuma hadn’t corrected the mask when she looked over my portion of the preparations.

“Don’t look,” Kore says, pulling me along hard enough that I almost trip before I hurry my steps to follow him around the fire to the next mask.

“We call upon Lady Kun!” I yell. I can’t help the way my eyes flicker towards another space opening, another mask in the crowd that disappears before I can focus on it. “Lady of Spring! Lady of Earth!”

Around the fire again. Tannesuma calls out, “We call upon Sinekaykup! Dawn-bringer, after the long winter! Orange skies!”

A familiar mask. Around the fire we move. “We call upon Kisarshumari the Rabbit Fox! Lady Ours! Moon Stealer!”

Tannesuma picks up the final mask, back where we started. “We call upon Chaos!” she declares, as confident in this as she had been in calling our Great Spirit and in calling Sinekaykup. I flinch now, at the thought of them actually showing up. “Changer of all! Great healer!”

I can’t help but stare at the person who steps out of the crowd, distinct in a way the other spirits had decidedly not been. For the spirit of chaos and change, they’re so still and unchanging.

Only . . . he’s that father at the tribal convention who encouraged me to ask for hunter’s paint rather than mender’s paint if I was a boy. She’s the cousin who showed me all the edible plants on the Southern Isles where she lived as our parents talked trade. They’re the trader's child across the fire who told me the story of how a greedy spirit killed Tukaykup and how Ilesh brought Dusk back into the world. A thousand and one strangers and acquaintances who changed my life.

“Don’t look,” Kore hisses into my ear, burning hot fingers worming up my parka’s sleeve to dig into my skin.

I only just manage to break my stare to look at the fire this time, listening with a dry mouth as Tannesuma calls the familiar chant asking for blessings for the new year, for the changing of our young into adults, for the healing time brings.

When she’s done, the festival starts in earnest. Apto and Hurekina and the others step out before the crowd and before the fire in the highly decorated parkas they’d sewn themselves. The drummers start up a new song, and they dance. Other people can join them or get food or bring out their music instruments or sing, but the four in the center who are no longer children and who are not quite adults yet must dance and act until all of the songs and stories are done.

This is as much a part of the ritual of their coming of age as their hunt had been - they proved they could survive on their own with that. Now, by the making of their own clothes and the dancing they prove that they can live in and contribute to the tribe.

Kore lingers. He’ll stay for the rest of the four day festival, and a little longer besides, like the rest of the spirits we summoned.

“Kore,” I ask. “Why can I still see you?”

“Later,” he says. “Pretend you can’t.”

He’s got a hand around my wrist, an arm draped over my shoulders, a slight tug on the back of my parka where he’s holding it to keep in contact as I make my way through the crowd, arms around my waist and a chin on my shoulder as we watch the dancing.

Sometimes, when I’m lingering at the edge of the crowd between dancing and food and the short snatches of dreamless sleep I manage, we’ll talk about the stories behind the dances.

“Is that . . . Tuhu stealing the moon?” he asks as I take a sip of my tisane and lean back against the wall. His fingers tap along my legs to keep me silently aware of where he is.

“If you mean Tuhu as another name for Kisarshumai, like Shalim is another name for Tukaykup, yes,” I say.

“Kisarshumari,” he says. “That’s your tribe’s guardian, right?”

I have to push down the flash of . . . hurt or anger or some other complicated emotions that makes me feel queasy at the reminder in his words. Kisarshumari’s tribe isn’t his any longer, he says so when he names himself. _Fire Lords_ hear me, _La_ isn’t even his Great Spirit any longer, ascending to the stars would have put him under Tui’s purview instead.

“Right,” I say, instead of _it’s your tribe, and she’s your guardian too_.

“Huh. The way Kulou told me, Tuhu was born a chaos spirit who stole the moon even before Kun came into being in Inari’s wake. I didn’t think that Tuhu could be a tribal spirit or so rooted.” Kore seems to realize what he’s saying to me. “Uh.”

I wait for him to go on patiently. This is nothing I haven’t heard before. My cousins to the north, as water as they are, heard more spirit tales from the Earth Kingdoms than from the tribes. When Kore doesn’t continue, I nod and take another sip of my tisane.

“The practical answer to that is that we don’t care. Kisarshumari is our tribe’s guardian, and our stories say that Kisarshumari is the rabbit fox who steals the moon. From the stories I’ve exchanged with our cousins, many of our stories of Kisarshumari and her tricks are the same as or similar to those of Tuhu. We view Kisarshumari as the name our guardian has given us for any actions she takes as such and the name we use to hold her to her pledge, and when she does not use that name she is not ours and what she does is no concern of ours.”

His fingers stop tapping as I take another sip. “You said that’s the practical answer,” he says slowly.”

I grin wickedly as I lean forwards a little, staring past Kore to the dancing around the fire. “Wouldn’t it be a great trick?”

“What?” Kore asks, but I can hear the beginnings of a laugh in his voice.

“Well, Kisarshumari is our tribe’s guardian, and she’s proven herself to be a damn good one too. That’s not a trick, and she’s proven that to us. If she’s not really Water, that’s a trick she’s playing on us. If she really is Water, then that’s a trick she’s playing on the whole world. It comes down the same as the practical answer- we don’t care what she is, she’s proven and vowed herself ours.”

I pause. “And then of course there’s the obvious answer. Tuhu’s a chaos spirit, she can change, who’s to say she’s not water some of the time?”

Kore bursts out laughing, and I let my smile soften as I lean back.

We talk about other stories, and there are differences between the ones he knows and the ones I tell. Some of the differences are small, more questions like those I’d fended off from my northern cousins. Others were bigger, asking questions I don’t quite know how to answer. And I keep getting pulled back into the dancing. Every time I close my eyes, someone comes up to me to pull me to my feet and back onto the dance floor.

In the end, that’s how I know it’s over. I close my eyes, and when I open them, it’s to a dream once again. Or at least . . . I know it’s a dream because of the white washed walls I can see from my pile of furs. But the dream once again has that oddly solid quality that it had had when I first called Kore.

The arm around my waist doesn’t even register, I am so used to the touch after constant contact with Kore for the past couple days, until I start to sit up and the arm tightens as Kore buries his face in my back. “Five more prayers please,” he groans. “It’s been four days since I had any proper sleep, just go pray five more times.”

I freeze, then pull out of his grasp as I roll off the bed. He groans and gropes blindly at the sheets and blankets of Lin’s bed for a moment before he seems to register the oddity.

He bolts upright. We stare at each other for a moment before he flops back onto the bed.

“This is a dream,” I tell him.

“Yes.”

“. . . Tannesuma said I would only see you rarely.” I pause. “But I saw you. And you knew Lin. And she knew you.”

“Yes, I knew Lin.” He stares at the ceiling blankly. After a moment, I carefully settle back down on the bed next to him, and he turns to me. His eyes aren’t the medium blue I think I remember from when I last saw him, but a deep, dark blue like the sky at night, with specks of light scattered across them like stars. “There are things I can’t tell you, Seta. If you ask me, if you guess, I can tell you if you guessed right. But I can’t tell you.”

I stare into the depths of his eyes. “So you’re going to keep showing up in my dreams. You . . . were supposed to be here all along?”

“Yes.” Kore breaks our stare off to go back to looking at the ceiling.

“And it’s not because you’re my guardian,” I say thoughtfully, “or you wouldn’t have known Lin.”

“Yes.”

“And there’s something special about the dreams. Something you can’t tell me.”

“Yes.”

I take a while to think that over. I reach out to grab his right hand, and flip it so I can trace the birthmark on his palm. I know exactly where Lin is in this dream. She’s sitting outside the door to this room, listening. I know she’s dreaming because the dream feels real, and I know she’s just outside the room because she would have barged in otherwise.

And I think about that. I can’t imagine life without Lin, but in the end, the world wouldn’t be so different if we didn’t dream like this, I don’t think. I hadn’t thought to question the dreams before because they’d always happened, for as long as I can remember, but if they’re important, then why Lin and me?

We’re nothing in the grand scheme. If it’s just us, I don't see why the dreams would be so important. The biggest thing I can think of is that Lin now knows about my cousins to the north (my Water cousins, living in plain sight on Earth and Air land), and that she knows about the southern waterbenders I know about. But it’s not like Lin can do much with that information. She’s the daughter of a spa attendant and a rickshaw driver in one of the few Earth Kingdoms that have yet to be breached by the Fire Nation.

If it’s not just us though . . .

I imagine a Fire Nation soldier sitting upright abruptly in their bed, and tears dripping down the white of the skull faceplate beneath the helmet. I know that’s not what would really happen, I know it’s just a mask like my own from the helmets we’ve sold to the north and that they would take the helmet and armour off to sleep, but I imagine it anyways, and I imagine them hesitating to bend fire when faced with someone in green or blue.

And secrets - Lin and I are nothing to the world, but between us we already know a secret that could devastate the Imiq of the Southern Water Tribes once more. If there are other people connected, other people, other people _trusting_ those who otherwise would have been strangers . . .

“It’s not just Lin and me,” I say to Kore, because the worst he can do is say I’m wrong. “We’re not the only dreamers.”

“ _Yes_.” Kore’s eyes close, and his fingers twitch in my hold.

“Alright,” I say, and I lay down next to him. A door opens and shuts, and Lin pauses by the bed for a moment before she lets my tugging on her robes pull her down to lay next to us.

“And how have you been, Kore?” Lin asks. “Were you happy among the stars?”

My eyes are closed, so I can’t see Kore’s expression, but I can feel the movement of his head as he turns to look at Lin.

“Somewhat,” he says. “They spoiled me, but . . . it’s very lonely to be the only child, and there are not many children in the heavens.”

* * *

We start the ritual almost as soon as Tannesuma’s awake. If we’d been doing this another time, it might have taken longer, but this close to the spring festival, the spirits we’ve summoned have lingered, so all that’s needed is the introduction.

Tannesuma walks me through the steps of her guardian’s dance, yawning sometimes. Despite its sacredness, the dance is simple enough, and while it doesn’t click immediately like Kore’s dance had, it’s not even midday when I’ve gotten the dance right enough times that Tannesuma declares me ready. We pause to eat, and we start in earnest.

I dance first with Tannesuma to the sound of Pakasariay’s drums, then again without her. About halfway through the second dance, the world blooms and bends outwards as I grab the forearm of the woman before me.

We seperate for the dance, but when it’s done, we’re clasping arms again. As we stare at each other panting, I feel Kore’s hands glide across my skin in their now familiar manner as he leans in to hook his chin on my shoulder.

“Your guardian is clingy,” the woman notes as I drop out of the position to let my free arm rest on his, and it takes great effort for me not to turn and look at him.

“He is,” I say, my voice neutral.

“Seta, this is Ahuke,” Tannesuma says, stepping forwards. She does on to list Ahunke’s full and formal name, like Ahunke had done for me twelve days ago before Kore, ending with, “Would you accept her as a protector?”

She’d talked me through this process as we prepared to call my guardian. It had been a given that she would introduce me to one of her protectors, for a shaman needs many and varied spirits to find the cause of and heal the many different ailments. And she’d told me as we prepared for the spring festival that she would introduce me to her own guardian, who had been a shaman when she was alive because my own guardian is so removed from normal shamanic tradition and even from normal human life that I could use the help.

Kore and I had talked over the ritual last night as well, and how I should name myself.

“I, Seta, son of Atomte and Kina, twin to Kore, Lord La’s to claim by Inari’s grace, of Kisarshumanri’s people, Shaman guided by Kore, bound to La of Ba Sing Se, daughter of Wenzi and Xu, Lady Kun’s to claim by Inari’s grace, of Ba Sing Se, Temple Drummer; and to Kore, son of Atomte and Kina, twin to Seta, no longer Lord La’s to claim by Inari’s grace, no longer of Kisarshumari’s people, now a star in the sky by the grace of Lord Tukaykup of Indigo Skies and Lady Tottomokor of Dreams, guardian to Seta, would and do accept Anuke as a protector.”

The ritual is a simple one, done in private and only between those who are willing, and with that, it’s over.

Anuke fades from my view, and I feel Kore squeeze me once before stepping back and leaving me truly alone for the first time in days. I shiver, suddenly, though the fire is keeping Tannesuma’s ena as warm as ever, feeling cold without his warmth against my back. Across the fire from me, Tannesuma is sitting down again. She looks exhausted, already reaching for the warm cup Pakasariay is holding out for her.

After a moment, I sit down too.

“You’ve got some time, yet, but the elders will be calling for you at some point.”

“Did I do something wrong?” I ask, my pulse jumping.

“Your second,” Tannesuma says, an amused smile pulling her lips up as she tilts her head in Pakasariay’s direction. “You’ve given your choices, they’ll announce theirs tomorrow.”

“Oh.” I blink. “Right. Do you . . . do you know who they’ll choose?”

I’d only given them two choices, and while I would be glad to spend the next year learning with either, there’s a ritual significance to who is chosen. A shaman’s chosen is supposed to be what the shaman is not, which in a practical sense usually boils down to choosing a woman if the shaman is a man and a man if the shaman is a woman.

I can read enough of her answer in her face even before she speaks. “I don’t know for certain, but . . . you know what they think.”

A lump in my throat, I nod. I’d forgotten a little. They think that I am Kore, having stolen this body because I insist that I am a boy. Even my parents believe that.

Kore is my guardian, but a shaman’s guardian, a shaman’s _protectors_ , are a private thing. And I won’t tell the elders. Kore’s _mine_.

Even for a proper second, I wouldn’t tell them.

* * *

There’s quite the turnout when the elders call for me, all of the children around my age showing up, and their parents, and Tannesuma slipping in behind me, and other people simply interested in the announcement.

I meet Apto’s gaze from across the room. She looks even more exhausted than Tannesuma had, the remains of her newly claimed pattern of builder’s paint still evident on her face where she hadn’t quite scrubbed it all off. Hurekina, beside her, looks to be asleep standing up, his cheek pillowed on her shoulder, eyes closed and paint only gone where I suspect his face had touched his furs.

“Seta,” Ataysep says. He’s the oldest man of the Rabbit Fox tribe, and the father of our current chief, and his age shows in the stiffness of his movements and the creases of his face. The other elders stand behind him, seemingly content to allow him to speak for them. “As a shaman, you will need a second, a partner to guard you in this world as your guardian guards you in the spirit world. We have spoken with those of the tribe you are close to and decided who might take up this job.”

He nods in Apto and Hurekina’s direction, and they both step forwards, Hurekina blinking slow and long.

“We have decided to send both Apto and Hurekina with you. They are your friends, and they are twins as you are.” Ataysep pauses as I digest what he said.

It’s - it’s better and worse than I thought it would be. I’d hoped for Apto. I’d been resigned to the idea that the elders would choose Hurekina - not because I would be disappointed to spend my life with him, but because it would show that for all they had given me the right to wear hunter’s paint, the elders still saw me as a girl. For the elders to choose both . . .

They’ve never really acknowledged Kore before. Even though they think they’re talking to him, they seemed to think that their insistence that I’m female would somehow expel him and return “me” to “myself”. And yet, they’re sending Apto as my second.

No, not my second, as Kore’s. They chose two people. One for me. One for Kore.

We’ll be reaching out to the other tribes to see who will be willing to foster you in a moon when you have learned some of our tribe’s traditions from Shaman Tannesuma,” Ataysep continues after I nod. “And Seta?”

“Yes, Elder Ataysep?”

“Congratulations.”

I can’t stop my jaw from clenching involuntarily as I duck my head in a way I hope looks grateful, and I stay down as people filter out of the qasgiq or begin to move about on their business here.

“Seta,” Hurekina says around a yawn.

“Come on,” I say, glancing to their parents, who nod, then to Tannesuma before I duck under his arm on the side opposite Apto. “You should get some more sleep.”

“Alright,” Hurekina says, already halfway there.

* * *

“So,” Apto prompts, beginning to pluck the feathers[4] from the goose duck she’d brought back for the spring festival. “Kore.”

“I can’t believe you just told us who your guardian is,” Hurekina says, using a stick to stir the water in the metal tub before him, shifting the lichens and bark at the bottom as the water heats.

“And I can’t believe you keep getting me to sit with you while you dye furs and leather,” I say, carefully shaving flakes of bone away with my knife as I carve the bead, “but here we are.”

“Kore,” Apto reminds us, dragging us back to the topic. It’s less welcome now, than when the topic had been green flying fish.

“Right,” I say. “It’s Kore. My guardian is Kore.”

“Yes, and you say he truly did become a star?”

“Just like my grandparents always said he did,” I affirm. “It shows too. He asked me about Kisarshumari and Tuhu.”

“Ah,” Hurekina says, air hissing out as his teeth click closed and he glances reflexively towards Apto.

Like I said, not the worst question you can ask, but any of La’s people would know you as an outsider for asking it.

“You’ll just need to teach him then,” Apto says calmly.

“Yes, well, that’s not all,” I say. “You remember my dreams?”

“You mean that Be Sing Se girl your imaginary friend grew into?” Apto asks teasingly.

“You-!” I _don’t_ drop my knife and the bead to lunge at her because I’ve cut myself and lost more beads than I will admit to in doing so, but I glare at her as Hurekina stifles his laugh. “She was there when Kore taught me how to dance, and Kore knew her. Not like he’s seen her every day since, but I think he had the dreams once too. She’s _real_. And he- he was in my dreams again tonight without being called and he said he’ll be in them again in the future. He told me we’re not the only ones dreaming.”

There’s silence for a moment, except for the crackling of the fire and the sloshing of the water in Hurekina’s tub.

Then Hurekina sighs. “Why did you tell us who your guardian is?” he asks. “Why did you tell us any of this when it’s not really something we can do anything about? But especially . . . Seta, you didn't even tell the elders. I’m so, so glad to be going with you, don’t misunderstand me, and even had they not chosen me, I would have followed you and Apto and I likely would have learned alongside you, but officially appointing me as your second was an insult to the both of us, no matter that we both chose it. I accepted so no one could question my place at your side, and I think you were offered the option for much the same reason. But you’ve told the elders time and time again that you are not the little girl they insist on seeing you as, and giving them the opportunity . . . why us? Why did you tell _us_?”

I don’t roll my eyes because he’s asking an honest question, but I want to all the same.

“Do you know who Tannesuma’s guardian is?” I ask.

“No. The only one who does is . . .” Hurekina trails off as he realizes what he’s saying, his stick in the tub going still. “Pakasariay.”

“Not,” I say, staring blindly at the bone in my hands, “the elders. Why should I tell them something so private when they already do not take me at my word?” I finally look up to look Hurekina in the eyes. “Besides. You’re my friends, who else would I tell? I gave the elders a choice between you and Apto for my second.”

I pause. “Maybe making you my second was an insult, maybe it was a concession to choose you both for the two souls they think I harbor from the two choices I gave them, but I’m still glad you’re my second. I don’t really care that my second is supposed to be everything I’m not - that went out of the window the moment they picked both of you. I’m just glad that no one will question that both you and your sister are coming with me. And my second is supposed to be my _partner_. You two wouldn’t be my partners if I didn’t tell you important things.”

“But . . .” Hurekina says again. And he doesn’t really seem to understand, though I’m not sure which part he doesn’t get. “Why me? You say you told me because I’m your second, fine. Why then, am I your second? What did I do that made me worthy of such trust? I - you didn’t have to give them the option!” 

“I told you because chose you because you are my friend and I chose you for the same reason,” I repeat, “and ritual symbolism or no, you are one of the few I would choose to spend my life with right now.”

“Then why am I your friend?” Hurekina shouts, standing, the stick clattering against the rim of the tub.

I stare up at him, bewildered as his shout echoes in my mind and his chest heaves. Unsure of what I’m going to say, I start, “Hurekina-”

And I’ll never know what I might have said next because Hurekina crumples at the sound of his name.

“Hurekina!” I yelp, abandoning the knife and bead without as thought as I lunge for him.

He hadn’t truly fallen, just gone down to curl up in a fetal position, but he’d done it so fast that for a moment I was worried he’d fainted. Crouched by him, my hands open and close a couple times before I carefully lean forwards and cautiously wrap my arms around him.

“Hurekina,” I say for a third time, and I glance helplessly towards Apto where she’s still sitting, plucking the goose duck.

Her eyes look almost black in the low, orange light of the fire as she stares back at me silently.

I hadn’t truly expected her to speak up. We only got here because she hadn’t, because she wanted me to hear what Hurekina is saying. And given the way Hurekina’s reacting, I have a sinking feeling about how bad it is, even as it’s my turn to not understand.

“What is it?” I ask Hurekina, squeezing him slightly. “What is it really? What’s wrong?”

For a long moment I think that he’s not going to answer. Then Hurekina sniffs slightly and lifts his head so I can look into his watery eyes.

“I’m _scared_ , Seta,” he says. He takes a moment to look vaguely startled by his own words before he sets his shoulders and forges on, words pouring out like he can’t stop them. “Soon it’ll be a century since the Fire Nation massacred the Air Nomads in their temples. We’re young now, but that year will be the start of my third cycle, and I’ll be an adult in full and you’re only a year behind. The tribes are all devastated without our waterbenders, and even though we’ve managed to build back up the rest of the population we’re vulnerable. And now you’re speaking about spirits and secrets, so _yes_ . I’m scared, I’m terrified, and most importantly I’m scared for _you_ . I’m scared they’ll come for _you_. I’m scared I won’t be able to protect you.”

“Hurekina,” I say sadly. “It’s like you said. They’ll be coming anyways. And for all that what I know might be dangerous, I don’t think the Fire Nation will care. I won’t say that you’re wrong to be scared, but . . .” As I trail off, an idea comes to me, and I square my shoulders. “Be scared then. You’re scared for a reason, so I won’t tell you to stop. But don’t let it stop you.”

Hurekina nods . . . then a suspicious look comes over his face. “Did you just . . . quote me?”

“You do have some good ideas,” Apto says with a shrug, finally coming back into the conversation.

Hurekina glances at her, then back at me as I cover my cheeks with my hands, even knowing that a blush won’t show up on my darker skin like it would on Lin’s.

“You told me you thought it was childish!”

“Yeah, well maybe I was being childish,” I mutter, staring fixedly away from him. “I was nine, give me a break.”

“I mean, if you want me to disagree . . .”

“Oh, just help me find my knife,” I tell him, glance at the spot I’d abandoned my materials a little nervously. “I don’t want someone to step on it again, or worse, sit on it.”

As Hurekina helps me dig through the furs covering the floor, Apto catches my eye and nods.

We’ll talk about this again, later after everyone’s cooled off. But it’s a start.

* * *

“You’re ready,” Tannesuma tells me quietly, under the hubbub of the tribe gathered around us to see me and the twins off. “Don’t forget, what I taught you was only the beginning, so you have a base to work off of. Don’t be scared if one of the others references something you don’t as a common practice, just ask them about it.”

“I know, I know,” I say, used to the reminder after hearing it so often. “You tell me this every time you think about me leaving.”

“Fitting then, that I should tell you before you finally do leave,” Tannesuma says archly, before smiling at me. “You have your things?”

I nod.

“Alright then. Go ahead.”

Tannesuma steps back, and I head towards Apto’s dog sled to climb into the basket with the furs to keep me warm. When I’m seated, I nod to Apto.

“Ready!” Apto calls out, making the fox dogs perk up, and people draw back from the sleds and out of their way. I heard her release the break. “Alright!”

The dogs leap forwards, pulling us out of camp. Behind us, I can hear Hurekina calling out the same instructions to his own dogs. The cold wind cuts at my face as we pick up speed along the snow covered path between the trees, and I tilt my face to meet it, glad to feel this once again when I’d been so sure I never would.

I have to laugh a little, the sound lost to the hiss of the skis on snow as I am lost to my own joy. 

  
I’m going to live. I’m going to _live_.

* * *

3\. A qasgiq is a building that the Yup'ik men and boys lived in traditionally. I'm using the work here to mean more of a large central meeting hall. [ back ]

4\. Thanks to my aunt, I know that this should take 30 to 40 minutes to do. Not very relevant, but good to know. [ back ]

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the poem "The Old Astronomer to His Pupil" by Sara Williams.
> 
> I would like to give a big thank you to my mom, and to [DrSmithAndJones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrSmithAndJones/pseuds/DrSmithAndJones) for proofreading and helping me with this.
> 
> My reference page can me found [here](https://drelmurn.weebly.com/reference.html) on my website drelmurn.weebly.com


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